coaxing

Whatever Honeymoon phase I might have had here is wearing off quickly, and since we've been here five weeks, it's happening right on time. This low-level irritability is setting in, and it gets triggered by unpredictable things. This morning I was calm and collected when the repair guys showed up half an hour early at 7:30am (after standing us up yesterday), when they opened the bathroom door to replace the tile and the steam from Justin's shower set off the smoke alarm (both my girls were still sleeping), when they fired up their saw and started banging. We managed to communicate as much as we needed despite our linguistic differences.

With my coffee brewing in the french press, I reached to turn on NPR and felt fury rise when it was in Russian or Greek (I didn't listen long enough to find out). Normally I don't mind, I don't even turn it off or change the channel. But today I was so irritated. When I turn on NPR, it feels like it's only in English half the time. Greek and French are also popular. This morning was supposed to be BBC World News. And I was supposed to be in a better mood after another long night of interrupted sleep.

I don't think it's an accident that so many breakfast foods are sweet. Amelia and I scored a spare corn muffin at Cousin John's yesterday because late in the day they are two-for-one. I think their purpose is to coax you into the new day. Hang in there, girl, just keep your cool for the seventeen minutes it takes for that caffeine to hit your blood stream. Things will seem less bleak then. And somehow the muffin is right.

I'm going to blaze through my house and do some tidying before the baby wakes. Hopefully my good humor will last longer than the caffeine high.